“What did you misunderstand?” Hawk asked.

Angel lay quietly, building a stained glass rose in her mind, scarlet petals curving against a radiant sun.

“Angel?”

Hawk touched her bare shoulder with hesitant fingertips.

The rose trembled and shattered into crimson fragments.

Angel’s fingernails dug her palms. She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. She spoke without looking at Hawk, looking at nothing at all.

“I didn’t realize that you were simply feeling sorry for me,” Angel said, her voice almost even.

Almost, but not quite. It was the difference that tore at Hawk.

“Angel,” he said softly, stroking the warm smoothness of her shoulder. “That’s not – ”

“Please, don’t,” she interrupted with aching calm. “It’s all right, Hawk. You don’t have to feel sorry for me anymore. As you told me, it’s a poor substitute for passion.”

“I told you?” Hawk’s hand hesitated. “What are you talking about?”

“You. Just now, when you let me find out for myself how inept a lover I am.” Angel’s laugh was tight, almost choked. “I don’t blame you for wanting a woman who can at least unbutton a damned pair of jeans!”

Hawk tugged the quilt out of Angel’s hand, leaving her naked again. When she rolled over and reached blindly to retrieve the cover, he caught her hand beneath his. Gently he guided her fingers over the fastenings on his jeans.

“I don’t want someone who’s undressed a thousand men,” Hawk said, his voice husky. “I want a woman who wants me so badly that her hands shake too much to unfasten my jeans. I’ve never had a woman like that, Angel. I didn’t even know a woman like that existed. Until now.”

The last metal button slid free of its narrow hole. Hawk moved Angel’s hand inside the worn blue fabric. A deep thread of sound escaped his throat when he pressed her palm against the rigid flesh beneath his bathing suit.

“That isn’t pity you’re feeling,” Hawk said, his voice gritty and his eyes almost black with passion. “It’s more need than I’ve ever had for a woman. And that’s good, because you’re more woman than I’ve ever had.”

Hawk jammed his fingers in his pocket, pulled out a small packet, and then yanked off his bathing suit and jeans with a single twisting motion.

Desire went through Angel like shock waves through glass, shattering her. Hawk was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, his body powerful and taut and as hard as the stone cliffs lining the bay.

But unlike the cliffs, he responded when she touched him, unable to conceal the tremors that shook him.

For long moments Hawk permitted Angel’s sensual exploration of his very different flesh. Then he groaned aloud, tore open the packet, and smoothed the thin sheath into place. Only then did he lie down next to her, pulling her body along the hot length of his.

“No more, Angel,” Hawk muttered thickly, burying his lips in her neck, “not now. I need you so much.”

Hawk rolled over swiftly, pinning Angel beneath his body as he settled between her legs. His hips moved against her, telling her exactly how much he needed her.

She shivered and cried out, twisting against him wildly, instinctively, running the sensitive soles of her feet up and down his flexed calves, trying to capture him inside her. His hand stroked down her body and found the liquid heat of her, a single touch that sent tiny, passionate convulsions rippling through her body.

“Now, Hawk,” she pleaded.

“My sweet Angel,” he whispered against her lips.

Hawk took Angel’s mouth and her body with the same smooth, powerful motion, becoming a part of her, melting her around him. He moved with aching care, afraid that he would hurt her in his need.

But there was no pain, no hesitation on Angel’s part. Hawk fit her perfectly, hot and very close, caressing her even when he was utterly still within her. She smiled against his throat and murmured words that had no meaning, simply sounds telling him of her pleasure.

Hawk moved slowly despite the need hammering inside him. He savored each tiny motion of their bodies so perfectly matched. Angel’s legs shifted, circling Hawk’s hips as she sought to know more of him, wanting him even more deeply inside her.

Her hungry seeking took Hawk’s breath away. Reflexively, he gave her what they both wanted, holding back nothing. With each speeding motion, each instant of wild pleasure, he knew he should withdraw slightly, not taking the chance of hurting her.

Then Hawk felt the intimate pulses of Angel’s release all around him and it was too late for anything but the need he had so long denied. His body arched into her, tearing a cry of ecstasy from her and from him in the same instant. He shuddered and arched again and again, giving himself to her as deeply as she had given herself to him.

For slow, sweet minutes Hawk and Angel lay spent in each other’s arms, drifting slowly back to an awareness of sunlight and sky and the soft, subtle movements of the boat beneath their joined bodies.

Hawk smoothed his lips against the tangled, silky fall of Angel’s hair. He kissed her temple, her cheek, the secret inner curve of her ear, the corners of her smile. Her fingers moved down his back to the powerful muscles of his buttocks and beyond, tracing his shadow curves as he had once traced hers.

He groaned and tightened inside her, sending sensations streaking through flesh that was still aroused, hypersensitive. Very gently, she caressed him again, learning the contours of his maleness as he had once learned her softer female curves.

“Angel,” Hawk said, his low voice both husky and amused, “do you know what you are doing?”

Before she could answer, he moved deeply inside her, stealing her breath. He drank Angel’s choked cry from her lips as his hips moved again.

“Is this what you want?” he asked thickly, feeling hunger coil deep inside him again with each hot, sliding caress of her flesh over his.

Hawk saw surprise widen Angel’s blue-green eyes, felt the clinging of her body as she instinctively sought to increase the beautiful, gliding pressure of his intimate caress.

Passion tightened in Hawk, but its talons were no longer painful, merely sharp, because he knew his hunger was met and matched in Angel’s straining softness.

“Hawk?” she asked.

Angel’s breath was short already, her eyes smoky with the passion he could call out of her between one instant and the next.

“I thought men couldn’t – not so soon.”

“A few minutes ago I would have sworn you were right,” said Hawk.

Then his body arched into hers, glorying in her response, the sweet clinging as she moaned and her hand closed around him, learning and caressing the tight flesh hidden within the midnight roughness of his hair, inflaming him until he could hardly breathe.

“Guess we were both wrong,” he said, his voice gritty with passion. “When a hawk and an angel make love, the rules change.”

The tiny, electronic alarm on Hawk’s watch cut through his sleep as delicately and ruthlessly as a steel cutter through glass. When Hawk moved to shut off the alarm, he realized that there was a soft, warm weight curled against him.

Memories came back in a sensual flood that made him acutely aware of every sweet inch of Angel’s body pressed along his. The memories sent heat and blood hammering through him until both pooled thickly between his legs, passion’s sweet pressure crying for release.

Hawk ached to be inside Angel again, feeling her heat and sultry softness surrounding him.

The endless urgency of Hawk’s need for Angel shocked him. He had felt nothing like it with any other woman, even when he was young and Jenna had teased him to the point of violence.

Hawk reached up and switched on the small, battery-powered light. Soft yellow illumination revealed the triangular bow bed. Angel’s hair was a pale golden fire burning against Hawk’s dark arm. Her lashes cast long, fringed shadows and her lips were very red, still slightly swollen from the passionate kisses she had given and taken.

When Hawk bent and brushed his mouth against hers, he felt Angel smile and heard her gentle murmur as she snuggled closer to his warmth. He knew that she wasn’t awake. Her movement toward him was an unconscious reflex as deep and true as her loving of him had been.

“Angel,” Hawk whispered. Then, even more softly, “My sweet, generous woman. What am I going to do with you?”

There was no answer for the long term. There was only now, this moment, and the generous warmth Hawk knew awaited him within Angel.

Without waking Angel up, Hawk found one of the foil packets that had been scattered across the bed in their haste. He smiled, remembering.

A few moments later Hawk’s hand slid beneath the covers, finding and touching Angel’s breast, kneading it gently as his lips nestled in the curve of her neck. Slowly, languidly, Hawk caressed Angel’s body, calling to her wordlessly until she moved with his touch, neither asleep nor yet awake, suspended in a beautiful sensual dream.

Her body melted, wanting him.

“Angel,” Hawk said, his voice husky as he parted her legs. “Angel.”

Her eyelids fluttered open in response to Hawk’s deep-voiced call. He waited until he knew that Angel was awake, aware, looking into her eyes… and in that instant he slid into her, taking her completely.

His slow, sensual invasion undid Angel. Her soft cries of ecstasy rippled through Hawk, undoing him in turn. He flew with her, spiraling quickly upward into a sky that was neither cold nor dark, but hot and bright and infinite.

When Angel had the breath and the strength to speak again, she whispered her love against the warmth and power of Hawk’s shoulder. His answer was an exquisitely gentle movement that made her cry out and cling to him all over again.

“Hawk,” Angel said finally, her breath uneven, “we’re going to miss the tide again.”

He murmured something against her neck.

“What?” she asked.

Reluctantly, he lifted his lips from her fragrant skin. “I set the alarm a bit early,” he admitted.

Angel’s eyes lit with understanding and laughter.

“Such a clever hawk,” she said. “I’ll have to reward you.”

“You already have,” Hawk said smiling.

Angel’s breath stopped at the beauty of his smile. She touched his lips with fingers that trembled, measuring anew the depth of her love for this hard and gentle man.

“What are you thinking?” Hawk asked, wondering at the emotions he sensed quivering through Angel.

“How much I love you.”

Hawk’s eyes closed.

“I shouldn’t let you,” he said fiercely.

With a harsh sound Hawk pulled Angel against him and buried his head between her breasts.

“Oh, God, what am I going to do?” he asked starkly. “I can’t love you and I can’t let you go.”

Gently, Angel stroked Hawk’s hair, trying to comfort him, to tell him that she understood.

And, sadly, she did.

She understood that every time she told him of her love, it brought him pain rather than pleasure. Hawk didn’t want to hurt her. Angel knew that as certainly as he knew that she loved him. Yet he believed himself incapable of love.

And, believing that, he would hurt her as surely as she loved him.

She understood that, too, and accepted it as she had learned to accept so many painful things.

With a skill won at great cost from the past, Angel reached for the serenity of the rose. When she had achieved it, she stirred in Hawk’s embrace.

“I know what you’re going to do,” Angel said, kissing Hawk gently, smiling against his lips. “You’re going fishing. We’re going to catch a beautiful dawn salmon.”

Hawk lifted his head and looked at her. Tears came to Angel in a burning instant as she saw the pain and sadness and regret in Hawk’s clear, dark eyes.

“It’s all right,” she said, stroking his face. “Please, Hawk. Believe me. I know you’ll do everything you can not to hurt me. I don’t ask any more than that of you. Don’t ask it of yourself. Please.”

Hawk saw his own sadness and desire not to hurt reflected in Angel’s haunted eyes.

And then he saw deeper, her certainty and her love. She understood his limitations, his lifetime beyond the closed circle of human warmth, his inability to love her as she deserved to be loved. Yet she loved him anyway.

Hawk bowed to that, and to Angel.

Very gently he kissed her palm, accepting her as she had accepted him.

Chapter 25

The minutes and hours, days and weeks with Hawk swept by, each with its own aching beauty. Angel didn’t allow herself to count the days, to add them up and discover the end of summer coming toward her with each sunset. Loving and losing Grant had taught her not to live in the past.